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Young Justice: Coldhearted - Review and Recap

Remember folks, here be spoilers, both for the episode and potentially for YJ: Invasion.Recap First, as always.

The episode begins with Wally waking up at his parents house, and being happy that it's his sixteenth birthday and that it's snowing outside. His dad wants to take him out to get his driver's license, but he's not in that much of a rush to drive... because he's Wally West, basically. Iris West cameos on the tv to wish Wally a happy birthday, and then to say that due to the snow his school is closed for the day, and there was much rejoicing. Meanwhile, above the cloudline, it turns out that some kind of weather machine is causing the snow storms...

Title sequence

Back at Mount Justice, it appears that they've installed Stargate-style protective irises on their teleportation tubes to prevent a repeat of the robot invasion incident. Cool. The weather conditions have apparently severely impaired their operation between Earth and the JLA satellite though, wonder how that will pan out. Wally shows up for his "suprise" party, complete with mock suprise on his part and much eyerolling on the part of Artemis and co.

Wally apparently doesn't know that Megan and Conner are a couple, and starts openly hitting on her at the party (much to Artemis' increasing chargrin). Barry Allen's there too. Dick meanwhile is trying to help Zatanna settle in, but she's still more than a little bummed about her father's basic death in the last episode, understandably. Artemis then takes considerable glee by telling Wally that Megan and Conner are a couple now, resulting in one disappointed speedster.

Batman stops the party with an emergency call, telling the team that they have a mission. That mission is to destroy the weathermachines, or as Batman calls them "Ice Fortreses". Wally asks why can't the Watchtower just blow them up from orbit, causing Batman to grudgingly admit that the spacestation isn't weaponised (probably to keep the friction down between the League and the US government, which is what happened in JLU in response to the Justice League's doomgun). And due to the number of Leaguers trapped offworld, each member of the Team has to assist the League in bringing down the Fortresses. Everyone except Wally that is, he's got to carry a desperately needed heart transplant to a girl in Seattle, and there are no other means of getting it to her at in time. Wally is kind of put out by this.

Basically he understands that he can't say no to this, but he's still put out about missing the first YJ/JL teamup. Emergency crews have been informed about Wally's route across country, and are keeping it clear to assist him (which is a feature, though obvious, that I'm glad they included). Wally arrives in Boston, where he's told he has four hours to run it to Seattle and although the pack is shock absorbant to an extent, it doesn't need any extra shaking about. Kid Flash decides to rush the heart there extra fast so he can get back and join the team's fights against the Fortresses.

Passing Chicago, Wally goes through a city that has several dozen cars and trucks piled in a heap in the freeway, but this somehow doesn't strike him as suspicious as he just goes around it and obsesses about food. Passing through South Dakota, it turns out that its Vandal Savage that's been causing the trouble... for some reason. He beats up a bunch of policemen to get Wally's attention, who promptly knows him flying as he skids to a hault.

Vandal then gets up and picks up Wally by his head. Wally promptly gets out of it, and Vandal explains that he started attacking emergency services along the route as he wanted to kill the Flash. But since he's not avaliable, he'll just have to settel for making him miserable by killing his sidekick instead. They fight for a bit, but then Wally remembers his mission and runs off... and Vandal reveals he was just trying to stall him. Hmm.

Meanwhile, back at the Ice Fortresses, the team are actually doing really well. Black Canary severally damages one, while Zatanna makes him explode by herself, more or less. While this is going on, Wally finally arrives in Seattle, with twenty minutes to spare, but he's informed by the doctor waiting at the hospital door that he's too late, the girl died 12 minutes ago. Making Wally immediately realise what a mistake those 15 miutes he spent fighting Savage were... oops.

Wally has a minibreak down, and sits down in the waiting room as he sinks into despair. Then the operating team run up to Wally, it turns out that the girl (ten year old queen from someplace) IS alive, but Wally just handed her heart over to someone posing as her doctor. Oops, again!

Wally runs after the fake doctor, and grabs back the heart in the hospital carpark, where he and a bunch of other guys start shooting at him. Kid Flash gets pretty far, but then Count Vertigo appears to slow him down even more. It turns out that the girl is Vertigo's niece, and she's the only one standing between him and his country's throne. Ohhh, now the plot makes a lot more sense!

Realising that he can't move, Wally decides to talk his way out of trouble, so he tricks Vertigo into revealling his connection to Savage and the Ice Fortresses by shouting out his theories as to what was going on to him and Vertigo confirming them one at a time. He then gets free, defeats Vertigo and gets the heart to the transplant team just in time, hooray! He then collapses in the ER waiting room, having completely drained himself of energy with both the run across the US and the fights with Vertigo and Savage.

Back in Central City, Iris comments on air that a team up between Captain Marvel, Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman managed to defeat the last of the Ice Fortresses... but we STILL don't hear Diana talk. Agh! Also, it turns out that the Queen died anyway. Awww.

Vertigo then appears to talk to Wally, who has been admitted to the hospital in Seattle, to gloat about how he's king now and how despite all the planning involved on both the part of the League and the villains, it was all a waste of time as his niece died on the operating table. And since he hadn't laid a finger on her to cause her death, he can't be blamed for her death and nothing can stop him from getting his country's throne. Wally then dramatically pulls the curtain next to him asside... revealling, in fact, that Queen Perdita is infact alive, hooray!

And boy, is she pissed! She revokes his diplomatic immunity, which causes him to openly just try to stab her to death with his swordcane. Wally then tackles him, and Perdita's bodyguards drag him away, where he'll now face trial for his numerous crimes on American soil (possibly including his Unjustice League thing with the Joker and co.) Perdita then gives her uncle's swordcane to Wally, saying that it's an heirloom from her family, and that he can keep it as a reward or souvenir.

Vertigo is sent to Belle Reve, where he is mocked by the other villains for his former social status (heh). Batman and the Flash confront the new warden of the prison, Hugo Strange, about how the most likely suspects for the Ice Fortresses were the likes of Mr Freeze, Killer Frost, the Icicle etc. etc., but Strange points out that that can't be true because they were in jail the entire time (liar).

The episode closes out with Wally deciding that the backpack he used to transport Perdita's heart across the States is a better souvenir than the swordcane, and that he knows that the most important result from the mission wasn't that he saved an entire country, but that he managed to make a little girl smile. Awww.

ReviewHey, the Light's plans actually failed entirely this episode! :D Okay, actual review. Altogether I thought that this was a good piece of character development for Wally, where he actually seems to have moved from considering from the annoying jackass he was when he first started out in this show. The acting was good both from Wally's VA as well as those of Perdita, Savage and the other characters from the show. Little moments like Artemis telling Wally about Megan and Conner's relationship and Dick's acts of kindness towards Zatanna were both standout parts for me.

On the larger scale, I liked how it appears that the Light and the League seem to be getting slowly equal in terms of their power and level of planning, more so than the Legion of Doom/JLU relationship in the DCAU, which was more of a wacky supervillain trade union versus an actual rescue organisation type of deal for the most part. I really liked how the League can actually be both trusted with the kind of mission that Wally is given, and that the emergency services would actually cooperate with them to help get it sorted. Which is an element from the old DCU that I've kind of been missing in a lot of the rebooted comics to be honest.

In all, a good episode. Not super brilliant, but certainly very well done.

At least Wally had a better birthday than mine last year... I had to wait till seven in the evening when everybody got back from work to celebrate and all of my friends were busy at their jobs too. I spent the start of the day getting an overdue haircut, applying for volunteer work at the hospital, and just waiting out the clock. I'm somewhere in the limbo of loser where I do have a couple of real life friends who are too busy for me and I have internet friends who also busy with their lives.

Extras

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